Chan Lowe: Florida vote count debacle

cartoon by Chan Lowe, South Florida Sun Sentinel

Florida vote count debacle

Florida vote count debacle

Chan Lowe

Former Governor Charlie Crist’s stock has gone up my book. I used to think of him as a weaselly flip-flopper, but then along came Mitt Romney, who makes Crist look—by comparison—like the Rock of Gibraltar.

As we know from his speech at the Democratic National Convention, Charlie decided that the Republican Party had become too extreme for his moderate tastes, and he stumped actively for Barack Obama’s re-election. This isn’t why his stock has gone up. It’s that on Election Day, he got on TV to opine about the internationally-covered story that Floridians were waiting in line six or seven hours to vote, and had been doing so throughout our state’s truncated early voting period.

Charlie went on to publicly remind incumbent Gov. Rick Scott that he is the governor of all Floridians, not just Republican ones. This was in response to Scott’s refusal to extend voting hours when it was clear that many more Floridians than expected were showing up at the polls.

Presumably, the Republican Legislature’s idea of compressing 14 early voting days into eight, and eliminating “Souls To The Polls Sunday,” was to suppress the black (Democratic) vote as much as possible. One can only conclude that the same motive was behind Scott’s refusal to extend the period by executive order even after it was clear that Floridians were being heavily inconvenienced. Charlie Crist can speak on this with authority, because he extended those hours himself, back when he was Governor of All Floridians.

But it all blew up in Scott’s face when more than just Democrats decided they wanted to vote early. And now, we’re a national laughingstock again—with a blatantly partisan and tone-deaf governor.

The rumor has been going around that Charlie Crist is positioning himself to run against Scott in two years as a Democrat. If he does, he’s got the votes of a lot of people with sore feet who stood out in the sun for several hours to exercise their constitutional right, and whose nostalgia for Bipartisan Charlie has only ripened in the fullness of time.